REZ BALL – Sports Drama from the Indigenous Perspective
By Harrison J. Bahe
The Chuska Warriors, a Native American high school basketball team from New Mexico, must band together after losing their star player if they want to keep their quest for a state championship alive.
Rez Ball’s existence must give thanks to the runaway success of FX’s show Reservation Dogs which showcased a contemporary look into the lives of Indigenous people with a comedic edge. Rez Ball takes the same approach but from the sports drama angle. It’s the all too familiar take of the underdogs rising from mediocrity to stardom and is based on the very true story of the basketball players of Chinle, AZ in journalist Michael Powell’s book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation. However, Rez Ball’s writers Sterlin Harjo and Sydney Freeland didn’t take too much inspiration from the source material. “I didn’t need to read the book,” Harjo states in an interview with Time Magazine. Harjo and Freeland are Indigenous and Powell is not so they drew upon their own personal upbringings on the reservation to drive the script for this movie and it shows.
Rez Ball takes from the greatest hits of every other sports movie ever made but with an Indigenous twist which makes the film far more relatable to Native audiences. I’ve always believed that us Natives have a very specific sense of humor that could only be understood if you truly had the “rez” experience. Rez Ball encapsulates that belief while blending real life issues, personal tragedies, and subtle comedy. Similar to how the excellent Smoke Signals opened the Native experience up to a wider audience.
If you’ve seen any kind of sports movie made in the past 50 years then you’ve most likely already seen Rez Ball. It cherry picks from the greatest hits of everything that came before it and delivers it with a specific brand of humor and heart that could only come from the Indigenous experience. It should be noted that audiences are clamoring for more films like this as proven by the nearly sold out screenings at Harkins Arizona Mills over the weekend. I kept an eye on the seats and was proud to see that nearly every screening was filled to capacity. People want to hear our stories and we want to tell them which is why I give Rez Ball…
3.5 Basketballs out of 5
Rez Ball is Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including suicide, teen drug/alcohol use, language and some crude references. It is currently playing in select theaters and will be released on Netflix on September 27th, 2024